Every year, Surrey Wildlife Trust provides projects for the SATRO Research Work Placement scheme, producing some fantastic results. SATRO organise research placements for students aged 16+ to undertake a genuine STEM (Science, Technology, Maths and Engineering) based research project, working within an employer or academic research environment. The placement runs for four weeks during the Summer, enabling students to work alongside qualified professionals and experts. 

This summer we worked with four students, split into two teams looking at two different angles of Nature Based Solutions. The first group, Enny and Jasvene, looked at how we could use Nature Based Solutions in small areas, rather than on the scales we normally think about. They designed some custom solutions and have done some great research to help our NBS team at Surrey Wildlife Trust.

You can read their full report here.

Enny focused on how people without gardens could try and use the limited space they might have to provide nature based solutions. Her initial research showed that urban areas had a lot of potential to be used more sustainably, despite the extensive issues they pose for the environment such as air pollution and biodiversity loss. She looked in particular at some of the designs and ideas from the International Biodiversity Property Council.

Based on the research, Enny decided that she needed to maximise the space from the external surfaces of a balcony - particularly the vertical ones. She designed a variety of options that could be used in urban housing to grow food, support biodiversity and improve air quality. These kind of ideas are increasingly important, given the constant pressure for development in Surrey.

She describes her designs below:
"The straight edges of trough-like plant pots are much more stable against flat balcony barriers than the usual round shape as well as using more available space. A variety of materials can be used, such as wood, recycled plastics or the coconut composite previously mentioned. It must have drainage holes to avoid drowning the plants when it rains, and also to avoid making the pots too heavy from the water.

One could also intentionally fill a pot with water as a bird bath or a pond, increasing the mass significantly to the point where it would be unsafe to support the pots by drilling or hooking them onto the barriers from only a couple of points. Instead a metal frame could be built with the pots attached to hang over the balcony rim. This can also be an alternative design for barriers that can not be hooked or drilled into.

For apartments that do not have balconies, miniature green walls are a possibility. While designing this I originally was going to have it all be one piece, but later realised that larger slats would not be able to fit through smaller windows, and for second floors and above going from the outside would not be possible. Instead, multiple smaller sections can be used."

Jasvene decided to focus on designing a solution for school grounds which had lots of hard-standing and very limited opportunities for creating greenspace. She started by conducting small survey amongst her peers to find out whether they thought having wildlife in their school grounds would help them feel less stressed out at school, and got positive responses.

After this, she went on to do some research around what kind of ways Nature Based Solutions could be implemented in school grounds. For schools with limited space, vertical solutions seemed to be the way forward. She decided to design something simple and easy to maintain, which could be hung on vertical surfaces like a fence or wall, inspired by the unique coconut composite roof-tiles designed by Andrei Petrar.

She describes her thought process behind the design below:
"The hooks at the back allow the product to be simply hung up on any fence. The uniform shape means that multiple of the product can be hung together to tessellate together seamlessly. The glass storage in this version (above) could be filled with coconut composite to create a space for plants and flowers to grow. Similarly, this bird feeder (on the right) has 3 hooks that allow bird feeding tubes to be added on, as well as a landing platform for birds to rest on while they feed. By keeping the shape of this the same as the one used to grow plants, the idea of tessellation is kept, allowing multiple products to be put together to create one shape, rather than looking like entirely different products."

Click here to read part 2 of this year's projects!

If you would like to find out more about our work with SATRO you can check out their website. Or, if you are interested in doing a research project yourself you can find out more on our Research and Monitoring page!